An offshoot of the �attachment� debate: Christopher Green wrote on 21 March: >>Christine L. Glover wrote: >>In many ways, I do see attachment theory as an operationalization of >>Freud (our childhood haunts us).
>There can be no doubt that Bowlby and the "attachment" gang were highly >*influenced* by psychoanalysis -- attachment might even be seen as a >"development" of psychoanalysis [�] Bowlby certainly retained his links with psychoanalysis, yet in some important respects his work on attachment theory was a fundamental departure from it. In *Attachment and Loss, Vol 1: Attachment*, 1969, Bowlby himself wrote: "...most of the concepts that psychoanalysts have about early childhood have been arrived at a process of historical reconstruction based on data derived from older subjects. This remains true even of ideas that stem from child analysis... The point of view from which this work starts is different...it is believed that observations of how a very young child behaves towards his mother, both in her presence and especially in her absence, can contribute greatly to our understanding of personality development." [...] �Because this starting point differs so much from the one to which psychoanalysts are accustomed, it may be useful specify it more precisely... [....] �One of the differences has already been alluded to. Instead of data obtained in the treatment of patients, the data drawn on are observations of the behaviour of young children in real-life situations..." Juan Carlos Garelli, of the Buenos Aires Attachment Research Center, has this to say about Bowlby�s break from psychoanalytic tradition: As early as in 1944 (he was only 37 by that time) he [Bowlby] published "Forty-four Juvenile thieves", a paper in which he already shows his departure from some psychoanalytic basic tenets: 1. Phantasy operating over reality, 2. The notion that mental derangement was inherent in human nature and part and parcel of his individual development, 3. The belief that the individual's psychic apparatus took pride of place over real relationships. I would like to stress here the fact that we humans could not be conceived as making and keeping personal relationships. According to psychoanalysis we never relate to persons, to people, to other human beings, but representations of other, which they chose to call the theory of object relations. When you thought you were thinking of, dreaming of, loving somebody, what you were really doing was to get in touch with a mental, intrapsychic, representation of that somebody. 4. It is impossible to overemphasize the fact that Bowlby showed that psychologists, but especially psychoanalysts, claiming that reality appraisal was a late, arduous, and incomplete task of human psyche, were simply standing the issue on its head. Reality checking was not attained during the first stages of life. An infant had to deny reality, as reality was far more he could cope with. Infants, in the face of this early incompetence resort to phantasizing. So much so, that when a baby feels hungry he first resorts to sucking his thumb, a doubtless sign that the baby-in-arms prefers auto-erotic satisfaction to actually sucking his mother's nipple. In view of this rather fruitless, or should we say, milkless, activity, burst into tears to call mother. According to the Freudians's views, we humans are so innately inane that we start off by phantasizing and accommodating reality to suit our needs, not the other way round. The other way round was begotten by the work of "The Reality Principle", a modification of the "Pleasure Principle". Bowlby started off from the opposite stance, human babies are able to perceive and understand reality as is�[�] Bowlby started by challenging this fundamental concept of Freudian psychoanalysis by advancing that a child becomes attached to his mother independently of feeding, cleaning or otherwise comforting the baby. This proved to be a ground-breaking idea that dented the core of all psychoanalysis. Extract from �An Evolutionary Approach to Early Development�, by J. C. Garelli http://attachment.edu.ar/evolut_1.html There are a number of other interesting articles on aspects of attachment theory (sometimes critical of modern developments in attachment theory) on the Buenos Aires Attachment Research Center website: http://attachment.edu.ar/ I found of particular interest the following Garelli articles �An outline of Bowlby's Theory of Attachment� �Epistemological considerations regarding Bowlby's Attachment Theory� �Controversial Aspects of Bowlby's Attachment Theory� Here is a quote from �Controversial Aspects of Bowlby's Attachment Theory� that may not go down well with some readers, but may whet the appetite to read more: So there isn't one Bowlby and one Theory of Attachment: there are at least two quite wide apart. One which unmistakably states mental health depends entirely on the relationships the individual keeps with his attachment figures so as to make him say that "the psychology and psychopathology of emotional life is the psychology and psychopathology of affectional bonds". This we can call the "young Bowlby", or the "uncontaminated Bowlby". The other Bowlby which begins to appear in the seventies, two decades later, has little difference with a common psychoanalyst, and thus gives way to all that fake literature on attachment produced by American attachment theorists. (Complete article at: http://attachment.edu.ar/controversy.html) Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=10 --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
